


Hanahaki

by Badwxlf



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, hanahaki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 13:08:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13272087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Badwxlf/pseuds/Badwxlf
Summary: Rose gets sick and the Doctor gets worried.





	Hanahaki

**Author's Note:**

> I finally got a wip finished!!! It’s just an experiment but it’s progress ;v;
> 
> A super great friend of mine introduced me to this trope called hanahaki and I thought it was interesting so I wanted to give it a try! In truth this fic is just me messing around and trying new things, so you don’t have to take it too seriously. Don’t mind the potentially horribly inaccurate science, please. Hanahaki doesn’t quite make sense and I don’t know how to justify it :P

She was spitting out hoards of flower petals—rose petals, ironically—and trying to fight back their frankly unpleasant taste when he spoke up.

“Rose... You can tell me,” the Doctor said.

Peeling a petal off her tongue, she shot him a look. “What?”

“You're in love with someone,” he clarified, causing Rose to choke on another bouquet. “You can tell me who. It's… It’s okay.”

“What—” she coughed—“what makes you say that?”

Tugging on his ear, he regarded the flowery mess she left on the floor. He seemed almost unwilling. Regretful. “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? You’re exhibiting all the symptoms of Hanahaki, an ‘affliction of the heart’, the locals like to say. Supposedly everyone on the planet has a chance of contracting it.” His expression turned soft. “I just… I never thought it would be an issue for _you_.”

“And why’s that?”

He glanced at her, running a hand crudely through his hair. “I figured you didn’t have anyone in particular besides family... I didn’t know you were in love, Rose.”

Rose tried to parse through everything he said, the taste of flower petals still fresh on her mind, feeling a bit disoriented. “Doctor, what does some disease have anything to do with being in love?” she asked, confused. Then she felt something threatening flutter in her chest. She held back the urge to gag, but when she did, that urge seemed to push back up against her throat even stronger. Her hands rapidly flew up to cover her mouth. The Doctor rushed over.

“No, no, no—don’t fight it. Let them out,” he said, rubbing a soothing hand over her back. “That’s it. If you keep them inside they’ll build up. Definitely not good. Coughing them out means your body’s defenses are working, and that’s much better than the alternative. Trust me.”

Rose groaned through a mouthful of her namesake. “What’s it got to do with love?” she repeated.

“It has everything to do with being in love,” he said. “Hanahaki is a disease born of a highly adaptable, versatile, and _possibly_ sentient fungus. It can thrive on virtually any biome this planet has to offer, really, and it has. It’s everywhere.

“That would have been a problem, and I never would have let us come here, but it only becomes harmful under certain physiological conditions… Conditions I hadn’t realized you met, Rose. I’m sorry,” he added guiltily.

Rose wasn’t having any of that. “Oh, it’s not your fault,” she sighed. She was more than a little exasperated, sure, but it was mostly due to having to deal with vomiting Mother Nature. “Don't worry and just get on with it. What conditions?”

He gave her a strained smile, then he began to babble. “In order to reproduce the fungus releases these microscopic spores. If someone were unfortunate enough to inhale them, the spores would plant themselves in your lungs and attempt to spread. Usually, considering the chemical makeup of a body at ‘peace’, so to speak, those attempts fall short, but—but when a person is in love, and especially when that love is not satisfied, your body creates an environment riddled with enough hormones that it mixes, creating the perfect biological cocktail—”

“Doctor. _Please_.”

“The disease blooms in your lungs because you're in love and it feeds off your love. The only way to cure it without surgery is to have your love reciprocated,” he finished quickly.

Rose groaned again. She’s never heard him say the word “love” so many times at once before, and this was certainly not how she would have preferred him to go about doing it.

Then something occurred to her.

“Doctor, you were with me all day—” a stray flower petal wheedled its way up her throat and past her lips, making her falter for a second—“so you've definitely been breathing in the same air I’ve been. You haven't got this—this Hanahaki disease either?”

Rose tried to shake off the implications of what that could mean, being the only one coughing up flowers while he remained unaffected.

“Superior biology, Rose. My immune system can kill off the sneaky little buggers before they even make it past my nose,” he said.

She almost sagged in relief. “That’s good,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Oh, y’know. S’just good, not being infected and all…” Rose amended. She could feel the flowers in her chest shiver at the hope easing its way in as she introduced her next question. “If you didn’t have that _superior biology_ of yours, do you think you’d be like me? Spewing out daisies, maybe?”

The Doctor looked at her, an indecipherable expression on his face. He opened his mouth to answer her, she assumed, before he switched gears and shut it. Running his fingers through his hair, he waited a second before he spoke again, his voice wavering slightly. She sensed the change in topic before it ever even left his mouth.

“I’m not important right now,” he began. “The Hanahaki disease can get very dangerous if left untreated. Right now it might just be an inconvenience, but soon enough it’ll overpower your lungs and you won’t be able to breathe.”

“It’s deadly,” Rose sighed. “Of course it’s deadly. So what; I have to tell you who like?”

He nodded. “That way I can take you to them and you can cure yourself.”

“What makes you think they’ll feel the same way?”

With this, the Doctor smiled fondly. “Who wouldn’t take to you, Rose Tyler?”

Rose found herself returning his smile with equal fondness. Profound affection teased at the flowers in her chest and soon enough she was coughing again. The roses petals were a deep shade of red.

When she settled down, her smile had faded.

“You can’t take me to him,” she said.

“Why not? I’ve got the TARDIS. Anywhere in the universe. Anywhen. I’ll find them.”

“S’gonna be hard to take me someplace I already am.”

The Doctor paused, visibly stilling. “They’re here? On this planet?”

She hesitated. “Yeah.”

“You fell in love _today_?”

“Sort of,” Rose said. “A little bit more everyday, I guess it’s more like.”

The Doctor turned to her. Crushed, confused, hopeful, doubtful—what was he feeling? His gaze bore through her own. “Who is it, Rose?”

“I can’t tell you his name.”

“Why not?”

“He hasn’t given it to me.”

“Then tell me something— _anything_ else about him. Please.”

The Doctor stepped closer and Rose took his hand. She watched him, observed the way he searched her expression for something she wasn’t sure he’d ever find, felt the weight of it all collapsing in her chest. She took a deep breath and her lungs tightened with the effort. Flowers formed into bouquets with every atom of oxygen flowing through her heart.

“He’s you,” she said.


End file.
